Drama as a trans-structural catalyst in a global-local and formal -informal rhizome of ESD agents.

In the center of the stage stands a collaborative theatre co –production facing sustainability with stakeholders from five continents. The project sets out to investigate a number of questions; How and if can Drama serve to enhance ESD learning with an emphasis on emerging processes in a trans-structural setting? What effect can an embodied learning that also includes a visit to the as- if –imaginary domains have on a intercultural ESD discussion? As Drama means doing - acting as well as reflecting there is a potential for a critical reflexivity, how can that be investigated? What are the ethical implications involved in the usage of such transformative tools? These are a few off all the questions that has triggered my interest in using Drama whilst working with ESD in an intercultural and network-based learning context. Findings from a pilot case study will be presented and I look forward to the possibility of enhancing the discussion within this distinguished crowd.

This paper will firstly sketch the key features of intercultural drama and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD); secondly critically reflect on current Higher Education Institution (HEI) discourse; the broad discrepancy between preferred visions for global learning for sustainable development and the rationale of self-realisation and commodification that seems to be the prevailing paradigm of European HEIs. Then the Interculturality and Sustainability network and the Gogol project which emerged from it in 2011 are introduced. The Gogol project, as an intercultural drama project, sets out to tackle issues of economic (un)sustainability. The concept of the project is presented and questions that have emerged in the planning of the project are shared.

Drama is embodied learning, it is interaction with the immediate environment where we all are in the same ensemble. In this workshop we will walk our talk, we will indeed all be both actors and audience. Our first entry will be sharing an intercultural project facing corruption/ economical unsustainability, initiated in Budondo, the Gogol Interplayground project, has now spread to all the continents.

It is easy to feel impatient with the pace for change when it comes to developing truly sustainable culture yet things are happening all over the world to lay the ground work, create the architecture and language of sustainability as a cultural reality. In Weaving Pedagogies of Possibility the authors seek to leverage from such developments. In this chapter the authors share their adventure in designing an open learning system within, across and between their instititutions. We insists this work involves peagogies in the plural as we seek to affirm and embrace alternative approaches to learning that draw on many cultures and places. We take it axiomatic that the word is always becoming other then it appears to be; that this is contested space; and thus it is in the play of environment, context, structure, culture an identity that the future lies. The sensitivity to the multiple and contested nature of social and ecological space lies at the heart of our vision an practice of pedagogies of possibiliy